


Sex and Magic

by Defira



Category: Dragon Age II
Genre: Aromantic Character, Asexual Character, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-27
Updated: 2014-10-27
Packaged: 2018-02-22 21:04:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2521778
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Defira/pseuds/Defira
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sex and magic are two things that Josefina Hawke is fairly certain she will never understand. One of them she is supposed to desire, and the other she is supposed to despise. She’s fairly certain she has them around the wrong way.</p><p>Written for Asexual Awareness Week</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sex and Magic

She’s seven, and magic has been a part of her life for as long as she can remember.

“There is power in blood, my girl,” he says, showing her the red drop on the end of her finger. “Blood is life, and magic. Blood calls and sings, long after it has parted ways with your body.”

“I can’t hear it, papa,” she says, frowning intently at the droplet.

“Not everyone can, little one; don’t take it to heart.” He holds her hand gently in his and guides her finger down to the parchment on the table before them. “But, think of it this way- a man who has lost his hearing may not be able to hear someone speaking, but if he is taught to read, they can write their message down for him. With practice, he will be able to watch their mouth and understand the shapes their lips make. He might even feel the vibrations of the sound, if they shout loudly enough or if he puts his hands upon them.”

He helps her drag her finger over the parchment, the drop of blood acting in the same way that ink would. Slowly, with her father’s help, she begins to etch out a crude symbol on the page.

“So you might not be able to hear the blood speaking to you, little one,” he says gently, “but if you concentrate, and if you practice, you will be able to work out what it is saying to you.”

Jo can feel a faint tingling beneath her hand, enough to have her giggling, and she squirms in her seat; Malcolm smiles, and keeps a firm hold on her hand. “What do you think the blood is saying, little one?” 

She giggles. “I don’t _know_ ,” she says in a singsong voice, elongating all the syllables and shaking her head dramatically. 

“Yes you do, little messere,” he says, but he isn’t scolding. “What have we written on the parchment?”

She flops back against him, peering up at him through a messy fringe. “ _Bugs_ ,” she says firmly, and then bursts into a new fit of giggles.

“Bugs, eh? Like the wiggly little bug I have here in my lap?” He tickles her, and she screeches with laughter, hooting and carrying on until Leandra appears in the doorway to shoosh them. The twins are still down for their afternoon nap, after all. “Does the wiggly bug want to guess again, before mama comes back to scold us both?”

She frowns at the paper, and at the blood smeared on her brown fingertip. “Magic,” she says solemnly, the look of fierce concentration on her face almost comical. 

“And what does the magic say?”

Jo stares at the paper, willing the memory to come back to her. “... light?”

He plants a kiss on the top of her dark ruffled hair. “Very _good_ , my little bug,” he says delightedly. 

“But it’s not working, papa. There’s no light.” She sighs forlornly and slumps in his lap. “I can’t do it without magic. I’m no good.”

“Not everyone has magic in them, my girl, but everyone has the power offered to us from blood,” he says, picking up the piece of paper and holding it out to her. “And everyone has the potential in them, for something greater.”

And the piece of paper, as she clutches it tightly, slowly but surely begins to glow. 

***

She’s thirteen, and Bethany has had her magic for several years now. It’s much more important to teach Beth control and caution than it is to teach Jo about their great family legacy, and so most of Malcolm’s time goes to her. Jo tries not to feel resentment towards her sister, even as she locks away the broken pieces of her heart every day that Malcolm turns to Bethany and not her. 

But for once, luck is with her, for Leandra and Bethany and Carver have gone into town, leaving only Jo and Malcolm at home. She has chores, of course, and she hops anxiously from foot to foot as she does the morning’s dishes, peering out the kitchen window as she watches for signs of her father. He’s been out all morning, mending the fence in the west paddock, and there are a hundred thousand questions bubbling up within her, things she’s been holding onto for months now as she waits for the words to unjumble themselves in her head. 

She’s supposed to do the vegetables to go with dinner too, but she’s agitated and excited, and who knows when another opportunity like this will come around again? When she spots Malcolm trudging around the outside of the farmhouse, a crumbling rotten post over his shoulders, she throws down her washcloth and dashes out to intercept him.

Before her courage can abandon her, she hopes. 

His smile as he spots her approach should calm her nerves- instead, she hesitates, slowing her steps and twisting her fingers together. 

“Done with your chores already?” he calls, voice warm as he greets her, and she knows with utter certainty that the warmth will be gone the moment she confesses to him. He sets the post down beside the wood pile and rolls his shoulders, wiping away the sweat on his brow with the back of his hand. “I’ve a use for an extra set of hands if you’d like to help, little one.” 

She swallows nervously, her tongue feeling thick in her mouth. “Papa, how...” 

He turns to face her, the jovial smile slowly easing from his face when he notices how nervous she is. “What’s wrong, Jojo?” he asks, calling her by the silly nickname that Bethany had used as a child, confused by the mouthful that was Josefina. It was an old trick of his, to set her at ease, but the guilt still gnaws at her.

“I...” She swallows again, rubbing a hand against the back of her neck. “I have a question.”

Malcolm gestures for her to come closer, and he guides her to the shade beside the house, sliding down the wall, long legs crossed with a grace that she envies. At thirteen, she is all limbs and angles, and nothing seems to flow easily for her. “You can always ask me anything, Jojo,” he says gently, patting the space beside him to encourage her to join him.

She bites down on her lip as she slumps down against the wall, frowning ferociously as she tries to collect her words. “How did you...” Damnable words, forever her enemy. “When you met mama, did you know it was love?”

From the expression on his face, he clearly hadn’t anticipated this line of questioning. “How do you mean?”

“Had you- had you felt love before? Did you know what it felt like? Or was that the first time?”

He considers her words carefully, a solemn expression his face. “Your mother was not the first woman to have caught my attention,” he says carefully, “but she was the first I fell in love with, yes.”

“So you hadn’t been in love before then? You hadn’t felt love at all?”

“Well, I didn’t...” He chuckles awkwardly. “I’m not going to recount my sexual history prior to your mother to you, Jojo, if that’s what you’re asking.”

She flushes, horrified that he would think she was asking _that_. “No, _no_ , not that, I just...”

“Josefina,” he says, tucking his arm around her, “you know you can ask me anything.”

Anything is a tall promise when he does not know what she desperately needs to ask. “What if...” She chews on her lip, because she certainly absolutely does not want to cry in front of her father. “What if I don’t find someone, the way you found mama?”

His laughter is gentle, but it cuts her so deeply. “Oh, Jojo- my little one, you’re a little young to worry about such things. There’ll be someone waiting for you to find them, when the time is right.”

She hesitates for the longest time, the words like a stone in her stomach. “What if I- what if I don’t think I _want_ to find someone?” She cringes, waiting for his disdain to fall on her like a whip. Everybody wants to find someone, it’s foolish of her to believe otherwise. All the stories are of great heroes falling in love, of glittering princes and lady knights courting in defiance of a king, of lonely queens being wooed by wandering minstrels, of a god being so moved by the beauty of a mortal that He abandoned heaven for a time to declare her His bride. 

What place is there for a foolish girl who flinches at the very idea of such love?

He takes her hand in his, and when he does not speak she fears the worst- she has struck him dumb with horror, dismayed at this strange, broken creature masquerading as his daughter, and it’s only a matter of time before he-

“No matter what path you walk,” he says softly, kissing her on the temple, “and no matter who you choose to have at your side- whether they be family or friend or lover- I will _always_ be proud of you.”

***

She’s sixteen, and Benicio is the most striking young man she’s ever seen. He has hair as dark as ebony, and his skin is a shade or two darker than her own, and his eyes glitter like onyx in the warm light of the fire in the tavern. He is Nevarran, just like her, a trader looking to make his fortune on the road.

There are very rarely people like her in Lothering- not just in looks, but in temperament, and she hangs off his every word, enamoured by the lilt in his voice and his tales of far off lands. He speaks of Nevarra City with a fondness that makes her heart soar, telling her of the cobbled streets and gas lanterns and coloured bunting, the elaborate marble and gilt facades adorning the great mausoleums, and the necropolis that stretches for an eternity beneath the stones. 

He is friendly, charming, affectionate; Benicio is a man of the world, and he makes her feel like there’s a place for her beyond this wretched little backwater. 

So when he invites her up to his room at the tavern- to show her a set of very fine Nevarran silver candlesticks, of course- she agrees enthusiastically, because never before has she felt so joyful at the company of another, so invigorated by their conversation and the things they have in common. She is no longer Jo Hawke, scrawny awkward daughter of that odd Hawke family, but Josefina Sofia Gottschalk, a child of Nevarra and woman of the world, educated and interesting and worthy of attention. 

And oh, the silver candlesticks are exquisite, just as he promises- blackened with age along the engravings, etched with the finest precision, a masterwork in silversmithing. She’s so busy admiring them that she doesn’t notice him standing so close, to start with, and when he comes in behind her and puts his hands on her hips she jumps, startled. He laughs softly, and she laughs awkwardly in return, and when he kisses the side of her neck she doesn’t really know what to say to him, so she just stands there frozen, clutching two silver candlesticks while the most beautiful man she’s ever known whispers in her ear. 

_Maybe I’m just nervous_ , she tells herself as she lets his hands move upwards.

 _He is_ very _attractive_ , she tells herself as he leads her to the tiny bed beneath the window.

 _I must be lucky_ , she tells herself, because it doesn’t hurt and even if it’s nothing remarkable it’s certainly interesting, and Benicio is whispering praises in the darkness.

He falls asleep soon after, and she lies alone and lonely, her body aching and her heart a ragged mess. He doesn’t stir as she slips from the bed, fumbling in the darkness for her clothing, and he keeps snoring even as she hesitates beside the silver candlesticks, still lying where she left them when he began to undress her. 

When she skids through the kitchen door at home a half hour later, candlesticks clutched to her chest, she doesn’t know whether she’s dismayed or relieved to see Malcolm sitting at the table, a book open before him and his worn spectacles perched on the end of his nose.

He looks at her, taking in her bedraggled hair and her crinkled clothes, her unlaced shoes- she wonders if he can tell, just by looking at her, but tears prick at her eyes all the same while her cheeks burn.

“I...” The word comes out like a rasp, so she clears her throat and tries again. “I need a tonic.”

Malcolm closes the book with careful hands, no judgement in his eyes as he faces her. “And a hug?”

The tears spill over, and she nods furiously. “And a hug, please.”

***

She’s twenty two, and she’s stone faced as she watches the pyre burn slowly down to embers. 

If she’d just had magic, if she’d just studied a little better at her runecrafting, if she’d just done _something_... then maybe father wouldn’t be gone, and she wouldn’t be standing in the murk of a winter’s dusk with a heart made of stone, because at least a cold lump had to be better than the shattering jagged heartbreak she could feel hiding beneath it. 

Carver is gone, stomping away angrily some time ago with Bethany trailing in his wake, calling tearfully to him to come back. She let them go, because they will heal each other, in a way that she will never understand or come close to matching. She stands vigil over the pyre, her breath frosting in the air before her despite the warmth coming off the fire, and she feels that terribly poetic, in a way. All she can feel within her is an empty aching cold, even with the fire mere feet from where she stands, and for all she knows it’s all she’ll ever feel for the rest of her life. 

Leandra stands beside her, face drawn and haggard, a dozen new years hiding in the lines of her face ever since father had fallen ill. She wears grey, as per Nevarran custom, and despite the cold in the winter air they both wear their heads uncovered, no scarves or hats to guard them against the chill. 

“I keep thinking he’s just going to come up behind me,” Leandra says suddenly, desperation and grief and bitterness in her voice. “Throw his arms around me and kiss me on the temple, then tease me for worrying at all in the first place.”

Jo can only grit her teeth, staring deep into the flames until her eyes water- it’s the brightness, and the smoke of course. She can’t afford the luxury of crying right now, so of course it’s only the smoke in her eyes. “He’s not coming back,” she says, her voice rougher than she had intended. 

Leandra’s eyes are closed, and her mouth is twisted into a thin, unhappy line. “Of course he isn’t,” she says, nastiness creeping into her voice. “How foolish of me to think for even a moment that you might share in a flicker of grief with me.”

“What good does my grief do?” Jo asks, her tone sharp. “Does my grief feed the twins, and maintain the farm, and keep wood in the stove at night?” 

Her mother’s cry of grief and anger is quickly cut short, a hand covering her mouth. “Can you even maintain a sense of humanity and compassion for two minutes?” 

“I’ll not indulge myself in fantasies when I’m needed in the real world,” Jo says, angrily smearing away the tears from her cheeks, even as the smoke pricks at her eyes anew.

“One day,” Leandra says, bitterness making her spit the words, “one day you will understand what it is to lose one so close to your heart.”

Jo can only stare at her, hoping that the crack she feels in her chest is not the stone around her heart shattering to let the dark, sharp pain free. “Do you think you are the only one hurting?” she whispers, unable to lift her voice higher. “Do you think that my heart is not broken already, that I did not hold him as close as I dared?”

“You know nothing of the pain a wife feels- do not try to pretend that you do.”

She swallows around the hurt. “Am I not allowed to speak of love, then? Are the shards in my heart only the shadows of love and grief?”

Leandra doesn’t answer her; instead she turns away from the pyre and heads back towards the farmhouse, the deepening murk of the early evening swallowing her up in a moment. 

Jo is alone, and lonely, and can only watch as the flames hungrily devour the remains of the only person who had ever tried to understand her desperate fear of being left alone. 

There is poetry in that, she supposes, but she’s never been good with words.

The sparks dance upwards towards an overcast sky, briefly pretending to be the stars hidden from sight, and for the thousandth time Jo wishes she were something else. Maybe a mage, maybe someone capable of the kind of love that apparently makes her acceptable, just.... something other than what she is.

Instead she watches the pyre, and the smoke makes her cry.

***

She’s twenty eight, and everything has gone wrong. Papa is gone, mother is gone, Carver is gone. Bethany too, because even if she still lives, she’s lost her freedom, lost all chance at living her own life, and Jo can only blame herself for that. 

She lies in a bed, clinging to life if only because she feels she does not deserve the easy escape of death- not when she has so much left to fix, so much left to atone for. The Arishok is dead, the Viscount is dead, half the damn city is dead. And she lies in a bed, alone and lonely, suffocating under the weight of so many lost souls, so many lives cut short because she wasn’t enough.

Wasn’t fast enough, wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t good enough. She took a battleaxe to the shoulder, and she still wasn’t courteous enough to die from it, instead lingering in a haze of pain and grief as the faces of the dead dance before her. 

So many displaced souls, so many angry spirits; in her more coherent moments she has to wonder if anyone is taking care of that, or if the city is overrun with disgruntled ghosts. She tries to ask about it, but a gentle familiar voice coaxes her back towards sleep, and she hears more voices speak of fever and infection and amputation. 

She should have been better.

“Don’t be foolish,” whispers the familiar, gentle voice, surprising her because she did not know that it had taken up residence in her head. “No one could have asked better of you- I could not ever have hoped for a better sister.”

She cracks open an eye with great difficulty, feeling like the great iron chains from the harbour are weighing her eyelids down. A bedroom- _her_ bedroom- and her sister, her precious baby sister, her sister is there with her, curled up beside her in the bed with dark circles under her eyes and new lines beside her mouth. But there’s such love in her eyes, desperate beautiful joyful love as she looks at her, and for a moment Jo forgets that she’s in pain. 

She means to ask ‘ _why are you here, and how have you remained free of the Circle?_ ’ but her mouth does not want to cooperate; instead she slurs “Circle?”

Bethany’s smile is like water to a dying man, and Jo feels tears in her eyes from the way her sister smiles at her. “I don’t think the Knight Commander wants to risk a public mutiny for coming between the Champion of Kirkwall and her sister- I’ve been given leave to stay with you as long as necessary to see you back to health.”

“What’s’a Champion?”

“That would be you, Hawke,” says another familiar voice with a laugh, and with difficulty she turns her head towards the sound. Fenris sits at the end of the bed, propped up against the curtain post. It strikes her as hilarious that this is the sort of set up that sounds terrible on paper- two sisters in bed with an attractive elf, precisely the sort of wretched erotica that fills the pages of Varric’s sordid stories. 

Her attempts at laughter only turn to whimpering tears, and Fenris clambers to his feet, shifting to the top of the bed. Jo hiccups on the sobs, the shudder of her shoulders sending jagged spikes of pain through her no matter how she tries to hold still. “Who’s...?”

“Everyone’s here, because they love you,” Bethany says gently, squeezing her hand ever so carefully in hers.

Jo can’t tell if the tears in her eyes are from the agonizing pain or from the desperate relief she feels. “They love me?” she whispers.

From behind her, Fenris chuckles, and she feels his fingers against her forehead. “Always,” comes the answer, and for the first time in her life, the answer doesn’t fill her with dread.

They love her, just the way she is. Not a mage, not an eloquent wordsmith, not a great warrior and certainly not the kind of woman you expect to see in the tales. There will be no poets waxing lyrical about her beauty, no handsome knights trying to woo her, and yet still they love her. 

Love, just as she understands it.


End file.
